Dusty May and players after win vs. UConn

The hardest part— and first, hold that question real quick, Dan. Elliot Cadeau beat me to it. L.J. Cason was playing as well as any backup guard in all the country and probably playing as well as anyone on our roster. And he— at Illinois, he's hooping and has the most Florida Man injury in the history of injuries.

And the next day, you would think he retired and took over an assistant coaching spot. His spirits were up. Immediately pouring into the guys, trying to learn, pick their brain, because he had a different perspective. And that's very indicative of this team.

He never one day brought negative energy because he felt sorry for himself. And for Elliot Cadeau to shout him out, beat me to it, is pretty impressive as well. But the toughest part about jobs, and this has always been my opinion because I've just taken jobs, my wife used to get angry with me because I just call her and say, hey, what do you think?

Do you mind if I take this job for whatever reason? And, and so now you don't get a chance to really go feel the place and see it. And even FAU, I went to see it and before I'd seen anything, I'd already signed the contract. That's how impulsive I am.

And whatever the case. So yeah, Anna will give you a better background than me on all this stuff. And living in Ypsilanti when I was assistant, a young assistant in Eastern Michigan, I'd never— I wasn't that familiar with Michigan other than '89 and being a fan of the game and just the feelings that people had, the pride they had in their university.

I just thought that was really, really cool. We thought it was a great time to get back to the Midwest. We were at a stage in our life where we were empty nesters and just wanted something different and then just felt like Michigan was a place ultimately with the changing landscape that we could retain really good players, even if it wasn't going great for them, it was going to be hard to leave.

And even Terrence is a great example. He had options to go anywhere in the country and it was difficult for him. Based on my conversations, it was difficult for him to leave the University of Michigan and the relationships that he had made and all the people that poured into him. So I just felt like that's the type of place that I'd love to coach at.

I could go on until tomorrow. That's one of our secret sauces is we have an incredibly talented group of coaches that never make it about themselves. Look, this is an ego-driven business. This is a lot of alpha males with great egos, and that's why they're successful doing what they do.

And these guys have made our players the number 1, 2, and 3 priority from day 1 over their own careers, over their own individual attention and accolades and things like that. And so just, it's hard for our players not to follow the team which is the staff, when they're modeling that behavior every day. And they deserve a big, big chunk of credit for this.

I think the most rewarding part is they never changed. Like, this team, we weren't very good early in the year. The first two exhibitions, we beat St. John's, but they weren't St. John's yet. And then we didn't play well.

And at that point, we considered pivoting and changing our lineup and going a different direction and maybe admitting failure for our vision. And because of our staff, we really— I remember the day like it was yesterday. We're in the conference room and we did a deep dive and everything that you can come up with to try to predict whether we thought that would— it would work.

And once we left that meeting, we were more committed than ever that this is going to work. And these are the reasons why. Now, we didn't feel like we were— it was like bamboo. We didn't feel like the bamboo was just going to shoot to the sky the next week in Vegas, but it did.

And then that happens quickly where we're playing at that level. And that's typically when it gets more difficult. I've been on assistant staffs when you play like that, and that's when it really gets tough because there's more tension, there's more of everything coming at your guys. And for them not to waver on how they I guess, continue to give.

To me, that's probably the hardest part and most rewarding thing that these guys did.